Video image means everything when representing your brand

As consumers become more tech savvy, they seek new and unique ways to acquire product information. As video is the most information-dense media, it has become a popular choice amongst marketers to deliver product information to the consumer. As videos can communicate to the consumer your company’s values, culture, quality, and product information, a consumer can form a pretty comprehensive impression of your company from your company’s video alone. This means that the image your video portrays to consumers can make or break your brand.

A popular trend in advertising that has quickly gained ubiquity is emotional marketing. This trend aims to deliver value in the form of an emotional connection with the consumer. Although this may mean not immediately selling your product, it will yield strong long-term results as you build brand loyalty with the prospective consumer. A key proponent to emotional marketing is the ability for your company’s media to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.

With traditional advertising media such as TV advertisements slowly losing market share to new, more convenient media delivery systems, product videos you display online will reach a wider audience than ever before. Research suggests that online video will continue to grow in the future. Expected to reach nearly $5 billion in revenue by 2016, online video revenue is projected to increase by almost 80% compared to 2013 revenues. TV advertising revenue on the other hand, is declining at an average of 3% per year.

Further incentives to pursue video advertising can be seen from the proportion of consumers who are more likely to conduct a purchase after watching the video advertisement. For example, approximately 35% of shoppers are more likely to conduct a purchase after viewing a video advertisement online. This trumps the corresponding statistic for TV advertisements of only 16%.

Online video also offers consumers the added utility of immediately purchasing the goods and services in the video they just watched. If your video advertisements are properly integrated with your company’s website, customers should never be more than a single click away from the purchase. If customers can conduct purchases with greater time and place utility, they’re more likely to actually make the purchase.

Offering consumers the immediate option to purchase the product they just watched the advertisement for has the added benefit of playing off of consumer impulses. If your advertisement effectively resonates with the consumer, you have a very small window of time where the consumer is likely to make an impulsive purchase. If you can capture this by allowing a very easy method of purchase, the consumer has less time to second-guess themselves or have someone talk them out of the purchase.

In addition to the previously mentioned reasons to start adopting video advertising as a part of your marketing mix, the boom in social media provides greater incentives than ever to ensure your video marketing strategy is up-to-date. In fact, video marketing no longer provides a competitive advantage, it is now a strategic necessity.

As online videos are starting to be launched on many social media platforms, the social commerce industry starts to play a role in how your videos are shared on social networks. With a 2013 study revealing that consumers are more susceptible than ever to the influence of reviews, noting that 79% of customers trusted online reviews as much as personal recommendations, social networks and consumer reviews of your product can make or break your brand image. Further, survey results from the study revealed that approximately 67% of consumers will read fewer than six reviews before forming an opinion on a business. This magnifies the effect that social commerce has on your online video strategy.

Further studies show that 68% of a total of 1.3 billion global online viewers share video. Additionally, emails that include video attachments have a 96.4% click through rate.

When targeting the modern consumer through video, conciseness is everything. In 2000, the average person’s attention span was 12 seconds. This number has dropped to 8.25 seconds in 2015. It is therefore more important than ever to capture the consumer’s interest immediately otherwise they will likely click away from your video. In fact, on average, the average user only views a video for approximately 2.7 minutes. After one minute of video time has eclipsed, 45% of viewers on average have clicked away.

These statistics suggest that marketers need to take a new approach when designing online videos. A key factor that reduces viewer engagement comes from slow, repetitive, and steadily paced videos. Regardless of how interesting the video content is, viewers will not be engaged if the content is not presented in an entertaining way.

One way to counteract this is to introduce a variety of dynamic angles and viewpoints to your video and cycle through them quickly so that the viewer does not lose interest. In all videos, basic and complex alike, it is important to transition efficiently so as to continually captivate the audience. These cutaways do not have to be random however. Whether the cutaways are to point out a product demonstration or show a person talking, so long as they are relevant and reinforce the point, they will effectively consolidate the message.

It can also be helpful to introduce various artistic aspects to your video. Some examples of this include wide panoramic video shots of scenery, close up detailed video of a key subject or person, and time lapsed clips. These can all help facilitate the transition process and reinforce key emotional messages.

While the video itself allows for tremendous capabilities in delivering information and semantics to the consumer, it is the whole package of how the video comes together that ultimately delivers value to the consumer. Other key factors to consider are how things such as colour, audio, mood, and point of view play a role in your message.

By coming up with an integrated online video that delivers high quality, relevant information and elicits a positive emotional response from the consumer, you can pitch your brand favourably in the online world.